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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27617371">At the Feet of Rajarajesvaram</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amuly/pseuds/Amuly'>Amuly</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Eleusian Mysteries [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Historical, M/M, Period-Typical Racism, Pre-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 03:21:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,247</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27617371</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amuly/pseuds/Amuly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Nicolo becomes immortal, he knows there must be a reason behind it. So he begins a search through time and space to find his answers. Yusuf tags along with him, because like it or not, their fates are clearly intwined (and then, eventually, they fall in love, so that’s a good reason too). </p><p>The first step on their journey: find the women who they both dream of. If there are answers to be had, surely they must have them? (Part 1 of 3)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Eleusian Mysteries [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019172</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>115</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>At the Feet of Rajarajesvaram</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Content Warning: This is tight Nicolo POV from the 11th and 12th centuries. Some of the words used in the narration, then, are modern-day slurs. Most prominently "Oriental" used to refer to Quynh (before he knows her name). </p><p>At a larger thematic level, this entire fic/series is about Nicolo expanding his mind and learning about all sorts of cultures foreign from his own. So he's going to start off from a place of ignorance when it comes to basically everywhere other than a) Christianity, and b) Genoa.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>His fellow traveler knew Greek. It was a different dialect, and his accent was heavy and foreign (though Nicolo supposed his own lilting Genoese accent was probably giving the Maghrebi a headache), but he could understand it, and make himself understood in turn. That, at least, was a blessing.</p><p>Few and far between as blessings might be these days.</p><p>“Did you see anything new tonight?” the Maghrebi asked. He was mucking around with a leather-wrapped roll of parchment and bit of charcoal he had traded some knives for in Antioch.</p><p>Nicolo was wary of the Maghrebi, in spite of everything. It was irrational, perhaps: he couldn’t die, so what was there left to be wary <em>of</em>? But of course, the answers came easily top of mind: demons, damnation, a separation from God in Eternity, never knowing His loving presence. All that and more, as he had learned in the priesthood.</p><p>But yet, all the same: the Maghrebi was alike. They had killed each other, and they had killed each other, and then: they had not. Because they both could kill each other until the end of time, it would appear, and it would never stick (was this already a banishment? Did this mean Nicolo would never know His loving presence? Questions, questions, and no answers anywhere; besides, perhaps, in <em>him</em>…). The Maghrebi had laid aside his arms first, grinning with too many teeth, a vicious insanity glinting in his eyes. The first words he had said to Nicolo that weren’t words of war Nicolo had not been able to understand. The second, he did, even through his disbelief, because they were so familiar:</p><p>“Είρήνη ύνϊμ.”</p><p><em>Peace be upon you</em>.</p><p>Greek. Belatedly Nicolo’s mind backtracked and replayed what the Maghrebi had said first, in his own tongue:</p><p>“As-Salaam-Alaikum.”</p><p>
  <em>Peace be upon you.</em>
</p><p>Nicolo had thrown down his sword and sat in the field of bodies. With a sigh he lifted his head and looked at the Maghrebi from beneath heavy brows.</p><p>“Va-alaikum As-salaam.”</p><p>The Maghrebi had thrown his head back and laughed.</p><p>Nicolo shook himself out of his memories and leaned in to examine the parchment beneath the Maghrebi’s fingers. It was another sketch of the women—the Scythian, this time, not the Oriental. But it was a tight focus on her face—illuminated by campfire, maybe, judging by the deep shadows under her cheekbones and beneath her brows. Nicolo shook his head.</p><p>“The same. The two women. Speaking. A language I do not know.”</p><p>The Maghrebi was biting his lip the way he did when he thought. His brow was furrowed, one eye closed. Nicolo watched him openly, studying the lines on his brow, under his eyes. He was so expressive with his face. Nicolo wasn’t used to it. Back home, even before the monastery, his family, his town… It wasn’t that they didn’t laugh, and feel joy, and cry, and shout. But somehow their faces… their mouths turned naturally down, their brows low, even when they were happy. Their anger, oh, that expression could cut. But their joy: was it as free as the Maghrebi’s? As big, as wide? Nicolo loved his home and missed being around his people dearly, but there was something so intriguing about the Maghrebi’s face. Nicolo wondered if all Maghrebis were as expressive, or if this one was just unique.</p><p>After a moment the Maghrebi looked up, met Nicolo’s eyes. “Do we even know they’re on this earth? They may be angels.”</p><p>Nicolo ducked his head, one corner of his mouth curling up into a smirk.</p><p>“The Scythian swears too much to be an angel.”</p><p>The Maghrebi laughed and rolled up his parchment into its leather casing.</p><hr/><p>They figured it out by the time of day.</p><p>More exactly, the Maghrebi—Yusuf, they had traveled together for over a year now, he had become Yusuf—figured it out. He knew, based on sailing, the curve of the earth, the rising sun, that times would be different if you were far enough away. The Pope could be standing in Rome at exactly midday, but an Oriental standing in the far East at the exact same moment would see the sun setting in their west. Nicolo argued with Yusuf about it for a while, until they sat around and made models for each other out of clay, the earth and the sun, and the moon because Nicolo got distracted and needed to figure <em>that</em> out too, and Yusuf showed Nicolo with a candle how the sun could rise on one spot on their clay globe while it was shining down brightly on another.</p><p>This was all because: it wasn’t the same time of day, wherever the women were.</p><p>They slept in shifts for months, plotting it out. They were in Baghdad, Yusuf making a living as a merchant and artist, Nicolo finding work copying manuscripts, and so they had the adhan to easily keep their own time. Yusuf kept careful note of the light on the women in their dreams on one side of a parchment, and on the other the time it had been in Baghdad when they dreamed. Nicolo watched the numbers and descriptions grow and fill the parchment, a niggling in his brain growing louder as the page grew darker.</p><p>“They are in the East,” Nicolo was muttering to himself one night, while Yusuf performed his final prayer of the day.</p><p>Yusuf pushed himself up from his knees and rolled up his rug.</p><p>“We know they are in the east, Nicolo di Napoli.”</p><p>Nicolo kept his face stony. Yusuf had taken to teasing him of late—replacing Genoa with other, lesser cities on the Roman peninsula. Nicolo took great offense to this, but he tried not to let on how much. He suspected Yusuf knew.</p><p>“I mean…” the buzzing in his brain was growing louder. “It is three, four hours. To the east.”</p><p>“The world is vast,” Yusuf reminded him as he threw himself down alongside Nicolo to peer down at the parchment. His knee knocked into Nicolo’s as he crossed his legs, so Nicolo nudged him with his shoulder. Yusuf grinned and nudged harder back, though his eyes remained fixed on the parchment. “Three hours east does not mean three hours east.”</p><p>“The world <em>is</em> vast…” Nicolo mused. The buzzing in his brain stopped.</p><p>“I need the size of the world.”</p><p>Yusuf blinked at him, attention well and truly ripped from the parchment.</p><p>“The size of the world?”</p><p>Scrambling, Nicolo reached for their pens, flipping the parchment over. He pressed his thumb into the center of the parchment and used it as a compass to draw a circle. He drew a line through a corner of the circle. He started going about bisecting the chord, finding the center of the first circle he had drawn, then using it to split the first circle into smaller and smaller pie slices.</p><p>Eventually the circle was split into twenty-four equally sized pie slices. Nicolo put an “x” above the top pie slice.</p><p>“If we are here.”</p><p>He counted three, four pie slices right of the first.</p><p>“They are here.”</p><p>He ran the pen over the arc of the circle between the two slices.</p><p>“This is how far they are from us.”</p><p>He ran his fingers over the circumference of the whole circle.</p><p>“If I knew the size of the earth, I could know how far away they are. It is simple.”</p><p>Nicolo finally lifted his head to find Yusuf staring at him, eyes shining, lips parted. The back of Nicolo’s neck flamed.</p><p>“What? Is it not right?”</p><p>“When did you learn to do this?”</p><p>Nicolo shook his head. “It works, does it not?” He frowned down at the page. “I believe it works.”</p><p>“It works,” Yusuf agreed. Then he laughed and shook his head: “I believe it works,” he repeated Nicolo’s words.</p><p>“Are there men who know the size the earth?” Nicolo pressed. “In the libraries? Your imams, or caliphs?”</p><p>Yusuf sat back and stroked his beard, looking down at the parchment. Finally he looked back at Nicolo. “If a man knows the size of the earth, that man is in the Abbasid Caliphate. There are no wiser men than the ones in our Caliphate.”</p><p>Frowning down at the parchment, Nicolo sighed. “Perhaps. But there are two women out there wiser than the wisest men.”</p><p>Yusuf clasped his shoulder. “And so we will find them.”</p><hr/><p>They were on the road to Kashmir when the bandits struck.</p><p>It was all right—they were making their way to Kashmir with a merchant train, paying their way with their sword hands. Nicolo had never been particularly adept with his sword—even a crusader, he was not much of a fighter. But over the years him and Yusuf had begun sparring together, and they’d taken work on and off like this, and so Nicolo had learned. Had to learn, to avoid drawing too much attention to themselves.</p><p>A bandit with a bow was taking aim at Yusuf’s back. Without thinking Nicolo hurled a dagger at him. He missed, by a mile, but it was enough that the bandit ducked out of the way and, when he saw the tide was quickly turning against his small party, started to beat a hasty retreat. Nicolo scowled and took off after him, anger stirring in his breast. He didn’t consider himself a vengeful man, but now, faced with someone who had tried to kill his companion, Nicolo found his feet fleet with rage, vision clear as he ran through the desert sands after the bandit.</p><p>The bandit was fast but Nicolo could not tire. His lungs could not burn, his heart could not give out, his muscles could not ache. Soon enough—perhaps a long time for the bandit, but not so long to the immortal who pursued him—the bandit’s stamina wavered, and Nicolo caught him.</p><p>“How dare you take aim at Yusuf al-Kaysani,” Nicolo spat, shaking the bandit by the scruff of his neck. He was speaking Genoese, because it wasn’t as though he was likely to know whatever Eastern dialect compromised the bandit’s native tongue.</p><p>Sure enough, the bandit said something back in a language Nicolo had never heard. Except, he didn’t need to learn the meaning of the words, because another detail caught his attention: the pitch, the tenor. Frowning, Nicolo tugged off the cloth wrappings that covered the bandit’s face.</p><p>It was a woman, beneath all the fabric. She was spitting mad and out of breath, brown eyes narrowed flintily at Nicolo’s. Her dark hair was tied back in a long, long braid, that now unfurled as the fabric fell away from her head. She seemed to be of the Kashmir people, or some other nation or tribe nearby.</p><p><em>Alexander and the Indians</em>, Nicolo’s mind supplied. She did look the part, of the fabled Indians Alexander had met at the end of the world.</p><p>The woman said something again to Nicolo—an insult, judging by the tone. Nicolo tsked and let her go, shoving her away from him. She clearly had given no apology for aiming her bow at Yusuf, but now Nicolo found he didn’t need it. His anger had washed away, like sand dunes in the wind.</p><p>“Go with God,” Nicolo told her.</p><p>The woman scowled at him, clearly not understanding his words. But when he made no move on her, slowly she started stepping backwards, putting more distance between them. When he did not follow she turned and started slowly jogging away. She checked over her shoulder, making sure he wasn’t following, but Nicolo just stood there and watched her go. And as he did, he said a small prayer: that he had done the right thing, and that this woman’s life was worth sparing.</p><p>When they camped that night Yusuf sat beside Nicolo at the fire, as they always did, eating their dinner together. Nicolo had no appetite after the skirmish that day and was merely swirling his stew around in his bowl. Yusuf got his attention by tapping his bowl against Nicolo’s, ducking his head to smile at him.</p><p>“You are so sullen, today,” Yusuf observed. “Is it because that bandit got away?”</p><p>“It is not,” Nicolo replied tersely.</p><p>“Because they don’t pay us by the head. As long as their goods are kept safe, we keep our jobs.” Yusuf grinned. “And keep heading east. Every day, further east.”</p><p>Nicolo grunted and said nothing. Eventually Yusuf stopped trying to rouse him and returned his attention to his own supper.  </p><p>As they bunked down, Nicolo remained quiet. Until: now they would have to sleep. And they would dream.</p><p>Quick as a thought, Nicolo reached out and clasped Yusuf’s wrist. Yusuf went still next to him, squatting on top of his bedroll.</p><p>“Which one of us first told the other about the dreams?”</p><p>Slowly Yusuf lowered himself down onto his bedroll, crossing his legs and giving Nicolo his full attention.</p><p>“It was the first night we left together, wasn’t it?”</p><p>Nicolo shook his head. He couldn’t remember.</p><p>“What if it…” he wet his lips. “What if I told you, and made you dream it? What if you told me and that is why I dream of them? I cannot enter your mind, I cannot see what faces you see. What if this is nothing, if these women…”</p><p>“Nicolo, Nicolo, hush,” Yusuf soothed. He brought his hands up to clasp Nicolo’s between his own. His calloused thumbs rubbed rough comfort across the backs of his knuckles. “Nicolo, you foolish Christian: you believe we are undying but cannot believe we share a dream?”</p><p>The corners of Nicolo’s mouth twitched. He fought it.</p><p>“We are not undying. We just have yet to die.”</p><p>“Oh, we have died,” Yusuf argued. “We just do not stay. We are constantly undoing the dying. Hence: un-dying.”</p><p>Sounded like a linguistic trick. But the way Yusuf said it: with a glimmer in his eye and a smile underneath all those dark miles of bear. It made Nicolo smile, in spite of himself. Yusuf laughed when he finally did, and reached up to ruffle Nicolo’s sun-bleached hair.</p><p>“You are only giving yourself to despair because we are so close, my pessimistic priest. You folks, you are so mournful: if your God came down from heaven you’re liable to kill him! Oh, wait…”</p><p>Nicolo growled and shoved and Yusuf, who shoved back, of course. This devolved into a tussle, and then a wrestle, and then someone was swearing at them in Persian to bed down and be quiet already. Yusuf muffled his giggles in Nicolo’s shoulder, and as Nicolo shushed him and stroked his hair, something warm blossomed under Nicolo’s chest.</p><p>Yusuf was right, in his blasphemous way: Nicolo had been so afraid of things going right that he was searching for the way they might yet go wrong. But perhaps… perhaps with this gift, there was nothing to go wrong except the choices they made. Perhaps it was all up to him, now: to do good or ill, as he saw fit, but the choice was <em>his</em>. Perhaps… perhaps he <em>could</em> do good.</p><p>He thought of the bandit-woman.</p><p>The next morning, before they broke camp, Nicolo rose with the dawn and Yusuf and followed him to pray. Yusuf rolled out his rug and went about the familiar rhythms of his salat, not paying Nicolo any mind as he picked as comfortable as a section of ground beside him and kneeled. With Yusuf’s Arabic flowing over him like water, Nicolo rapidly ran through his prayers: <em>In nomine patri, et filii, et spirictus sancti-</em> <em>Pater noster, qui es in caelis</em>- <em>Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum- </em>He stumbled over the words, over the language, for a minute in the beginning. Yusuf’s Arabic was too loud, too confusing. But then, like music, the words shaped themselves in his mouth, and he found himself reciting his prayers in the same rhythm he always had. And somehow that rhythm fit in with the rhythm of Yusuf’s prayers.</p><p>Yusuf finished first, and waited, rolling up his rug and unabashedly watching Nicolo run through a last Apostle’s Creed. When the last <em>Amen</em> faded from his lips, Yusuf offered a hand up and they stood, clasping hands, as the dawn broke.</p><p>Yusuf didn’t ask, though Nicolo could see the question in his eye. Yusuf was not the quiet, stoic type. He wore his heart on his sleeve—quick to anger, maybe, but also quick to laugh, quick to forgive. Nicolo looked out at the sunrise—rising in the east. They’d be squinting into it all morning.</p><p>Nicolo couldn’t even find it in himself to be annoyed. For the sun was rising on another day, and Nicolo was alive to see it, and to do with this day what he wished.</p><p>He scratched at his beard.</p><p>“Come,” Nicolo ordered Yusuf. “I need your help.” Yusuf trailed after him without question.</p><p>Their water rations were limited as they passed through the desert, so he wouldn’t be able to do the job he wanted. But with Yusuf’s help he could get close. They found a spot a little ways from the rest of the camp, away from prying eyes. There wasn’t much way to be hidden around here: they could go climb around a sand dune, well off the path, or walk miles up-road until they were lost in the haze of the heat on the road, neither of which were practical options. Instead Nicolo stepped off far enough that someone would have to work to overhear them, setting down his sword on a large rock alongside the path. Then he pulled out his dagger—one Yusuf had recovered for him after the bandits yesterday. He handed it to Yusuf, who was watching him silently.</p><p>Nicolo scratched viciously at his red and brown beard. “I need it off. Help me, please.”</p><p>Yusuf’s grin was blinding white beneath his own dark beard: longer and more beautifully kept than Nicolo’s, as it always had been. Nicolo tugged helplessly at the uneven ends of his beard.</p><p>“Oh, how could I ever end the life of a creature so… fondly thought of?” Yusuf mused.</p><p>“It is hot and miserable, and I know I look more like a minotaur than a man, so please, put myself and my pathetic beard out of our misery, Yusuf.”</p><p>Still grinning, Yusuf reached forward and carefully carded his fingers through Nicolo’s beard with one hand, fingerpads tapping at the edges of his jaw, his cheek.</p><p>“You will be sorely missed,” Yusuf promised the beard. Nicolo would have said something back, but then the dagger was at his throat, and Yusuf was slicing through handfuls of beard at once.</p><p>Although he could not give Nicolo a proper shave amongst the waterless desert sands, Yusuf managed to trim his beard down to a mere whisper. Nicolo scratched his fingers over the now-rough shorthairs along his cheeks. He sighed, face feeling lighter, breeze cooling his skin in a way he hadn’t felt in years.</p><p>“Ah, Yusuf, <em>grazie, grazie, grazie mille</em>.”</p><p>Yusuf was smirking at him as he examined his handiwork. Nicolo frowned as he patted at his face.</p><p>“What? You didn’t leave me looking like a madman, did you?”</p><p>“Not a madman, no…” Yusuf replied slowly. He closed one eye and tilted his head. “Not like any kind of <em>man</em> at all, I’d say…”</p><p>Grumbling to himself, Nicolo picked up his sword and unsheathed it, tilting the broadsword back and forth so he could examine his reflection in it.</p><p>“I didn’t know the Pope sent children to <em>Al-Quds</em> on his Crusades…”</p><p>Ah. Nicolo lowered his sword, scowling over at Yusuf. “We were born the same year,” he reminded Yusuf.</p><p>“So we thought, but perhaps you Christians got your math wrong. You do that quite a bit, you know.”</p><p>“<em>I</em> do not get my math wrong,” Nicolo hissed. But he couldn’t even <em>really</em> be mad at Yusuf, because he felt a season cooler already, face freshly shorn and skin already healed from any cuts or burns from Yusuf’s careful knifework.</p><p>Yusuf draped his arm around Nicolo’s shoulders as they turned back to the camp together. “I never thought so, but I also thought I traveled with a man, not a boy-”</p><p>“I will come for <em>your</em> beard in the night,” Nicolo swore. Yusuf’s laugh was big and loud, filling up the miles and miles of clear blue sky above their heads.</p><p>The long, russet strands of Nicolo’s beard were gone by the time the camp passed the spot a short time later, blown away into the sand dunes.</p><hr/><p>The rain had lasted a month. And then the cyclone came.</p><p>They did what they could. They found a boat, they helped people off their roofs and rowed them to higher ground. They drowned a dozen, two dozen, so many times they lost count.</p><p>They found the dead and brought them someplace dry when they could. They left them when there were more lives to be saved, and tried to remember where they were, sent prayers up to their two Gods that the bodies would be in the same place when… whenever this rain ended.</p><p>They sent up prayers for the end of the rain. But both their Gods were not known for sparing His children from floodwaters. And so they worked, and they drowned, and they rowed, and they swam, and they drowned, and they drowned, and they drowned.</p><p>After two days the cyclone was gone, and blessedly, a break in the rain followed. Perhaps the cyclone had brought all the clouds together in one place, and now that it had moved on there were no clouds left. Not until they had a chance to replenish, at least.</p><p>Yusuf and Nicolo sat at the bottom of a valley, waterlogged and shivering. Nicolo had come-to last, coughing floodwater from his lungs, finding himself held tight in Yusuf’s arms. They grasped at each other as they breathed and watched the floodwaters ebb. They were still sitting in water up to their knees, but at least they could sit. At least they could stand. It was more than could be said about the past horrific weeks.</p><p>Nicolo cast his mind back to what they had been doing before this latest death. He jerked in Yusuf’s arms when he remembered, craning his neck to look up the hill. “The children?”</p><p>“Safe,” Yusuf assured him. “A boat just passed on its way to them. Safe, and cared for.”</p><p>Nicolo relaxed in Yusuf’s arms. “Thank God.” Yusuf said nothing, but the sentiment was clearly shared in his eyes.</p><p>They clung to each other, watching the sun rise on clear skies, holding each other, sitting in dirty flood water. Nicolo turned—to ask Yusuf something, to share something with him, to just exchange a look, maybe?—and in later years, neither would be able to remember who it was who leaned in first. Like so many other things, it would seem, this they did together, as one.</p><p>Yusuf’s fingers were rough against Nicolo’s cheeks, but Nicolo knew what tenderness they were capable of. He breathed through his nose, lungs still not fully recovered, but not willing to coddle them when he had Yusuf in his arms, on his lips, in his mouth.</p><p>Afterwards, there would be time for guilt. After, Nicolo would say a prayer of contrition, and wonder if he shouldn’t turn around now and start walking until he was in sight of the familiar spire of a Christian church. But this was not after, and in the now, Nicolo opened his mouth wider, crawled into Yusuf’s lap.</p><p>They had each other, there, in the muddy, swamp waters at the bottom of a hill in an Indian village Nicolo could never remember the name of and Yusuf would insist on a different name every time they reminisced. There was not much art to it: merely friction, and hands, rubbing themselves against each other until they both found their release. But Yusuf’s kisses were like fire, his beard the finest silk, and Nicolo knew he would be forever marked by what transpired in a moment.</p><p>Nicolo kissed Yusuf’s lips, his nose, his cheeks. He stroked his beard and lay his face against Yusuf’s neck. There were words, but Nicolo could not find them. Maybe he could find them later. For now, he could only touch, and hope Yusuf was a good enough linguist to translate exactly what Nicolo was saying.</p><p>It was many more days before they were able to sit somewhere dry, by a fire, and eat a warm meal. The village mothers scraped together a meal for them especially, adopting Nicolo and Yusuf as their own after they had saved so many of their own.</p><p>There were too many bodies to hold proper funerals. Sickness would set in if the bodies were left outside, contaminating the water, and the water was everywhere, could get everywhere. A dead body in a pool of water in one part of the village could infect drinking water on the other side of the village, simply because there was so <em>much</em> water right now. Tomorrow, he and Yusuf would be digging mass graves for the bodies. And the next day, and the next.</p><p>Yusuf nudged his knee against Nicolo’s. He was looking at him curiously, smile kissing the corners of his mouth, beneath his beard. Nicolo shook his head and nodded back at him.</p><p>“I am alright.”</p><p>“Are you?”</p><p>Nicolo took in a breath, let it out. Allowed himself to take a proper assessment before he spoke, so that his words would be true. Then he met Yusuf’s eyes in the firelight and smiled.</p><p>“The women: they are so close,” Nicolo told him.</p><p>Their dreams had shown them. The time of day: it was almost the same as their own. They were near the women’s pie-slice of the earth, and the further east they traveled the more their surroundings grew to look like the settings they saw their women in, night after night.</p><p>“They will have answers,” Nicolo said.</p><p>Yusuf sighed, casting his eyes down in that way he did when he did not wish to disagree. Lightly, Nicolo rested his hand on Yusuf’s knee and waited for him to meet his eyes once more.</p><p>“All of this. It is a question. And they: they are the answer.”</p><p>Yusuf’s smile was tight, and Nicolo knew he didn’t agree. Not yet. But that was alright: Yusuf would go wherever Nicolo went, and he wanted to meet the women as much as Nicolo did himself—even if his expectations of them were much lower than Nicolo’s. Nicolo squeezed Yusuf’s knee and smiled. They were close to their women. It would not be years and years more before he saw them. Before he got his answers.</p><hr/><p>Nicolo woke up with a jolt. And then he laughed. He kept laughing, laughing and laughing, until Yusuf stirred beside him, grabbing at Nicolo’s hip as he slowly pulled himself towards consciousness himself.</p><p>“Nicolo, Nicolo,” Yusuf cooed, comforting though he did not yet know what he was comforting. “Nicolo…”</p><p>“I know where they are,” Nicolo laughed. “We passed. Ships in a night. We passed each other.”</p><p>Yusuf shook his head like a dog, blinking muzzily in the pitch-black of their hut. “What?”</p><p>“The women. They are a day past us. Back the way we came.”</p><p>Now, as the words sank in, Yusuf laughed. Nicolo’s laughter started again and they clutched at each other, laughing in the night.</p><p>“What did you see?”</p><p>“Rajarajesvaram. The temple to their Shiva. I recognized it behind the Scythian’s horse. In the dark, against the moon. I would not have seen it had the moon not been so bright.”</p><p>Yusuf groaned and lay backwards against their sleeping pallet.</p><p>“You think they would have realized.”</p><p>“Depends when they slept,” Nicolo reminded him. He heard more than saw Yusuf raise his head from their bed next to him.</p><p>“Do we leave now?”</p><p>Nicolo shook his head and settled back down alongside Yusuf, pressing his body to Yusuf’s from toe to head. Yusuf hummed happily, pressing back against the touch.</p><p>“No. We are so near. We can leave in the morning.”</p><p>“Good, because I feel we have barely slept.”</p><p>“And whose fault is that?”</p><p>Yusuf turned his face into Nicolo’s, pressing his grin against his cheek, against his lips. “It could not have been <em>just</em> mine. Not as I recall…”</p><p>Nicolo smiled back as he let Yusuf kiss him, and then kissed him in return. Their tongues slid wetly against each other, noises obscene in the pitch black of their hut. Yusuf moved against Nicolo, hiking himself up so he could lay on top of him.</p><p>“Yusuf…” Nicolo mounted the faintest of resistance.</p><p>“It will help us get back to sleep,” Yusuf promised him. “And morning come all the faster.”</p><p>Well. There was no arguing with that.</p><hr/><p>The Oriental woman— Quynh, she told them. Her name was Quyhn—killed them both before they even knew they had found the women. Or, Nicolo supposed, before they knew the women had found <em>them</em>. It was so fast—an arrow to the throat—that Nicolo did not have time for a thought as he bled out. He felt the pain, and even as he reached for his throat his legs buckled, and even as he started to formulate a thought, his heart stopped.</p><p>They came back gasping. Yusuf was reaching for Nicolo, but Nicolo froze, staring up at the almond-shaped eyes staring down at him.</p><p>“We have looked for you,” Nicolo told those eyes. He spoke Arabic, because it was the most widely-used language he knew.</p><p>The one he would call Quynh laughed viciously, before rising from her crouch. Behind her rose the Scythian: tall and statuesque as any pagan goddess Nicolo had encountered in his travels. Maybe, in fact, she was the inspiration for them, if she was like them.</p><p>Yusuf bowed his head in greeting. “<em>As-salam alaykum</em>.”</p><p>The Scythian’s mouth twitched. “Oh, get up,” she said, in perfect Arabic. “And don’t tell me you don’t drink.”</p><p>Yusuf didn’t, in fact, though he did eat hashish. He shared some with Quynh, while Nicolo accepted a skin of something stronger than wine from the Scythian—Andromache, she told them she was called.</p><p>“Do you dream of us?” Nicolo asked, because he had to know. He and Yusuf had long assumed it, but they’d never actually <em>known</em> it to be true.</p><p>Andromache’s eyes were black obsidian in the light of their fire. She was smiling, or almost-smiling, in that mysterious way she had.</p><p>Quynh laughed, knocking herself against Andromache’s side. She said something in the rapid, tonal language of the Orient. Or one of the languages—Nicolo had no firm idea how many countries with how many languages existed out here past the reach of Christ. Andromache said something back in the same language, mouth wrapping around the syllables and emitting tones Nicolo could never see himself managing, not after a thousand years. But perhaps Andromache had had even longer to practice. He did not know. He knew next to nothing about these women, except that they showed up in his and Yusuf’s dreams.</p><p>“Yes,” Andromache said, finally. “The dreams will stop now.”</p><p>“They stop once we meet,” Quynh explained.</p><p>Nicolo looked between them. “Why?”</p><p>Andromache shrugged. Quynh laughed. “Well: they have served their purpose, then.”</p><p>Nicolo glanced over at Yusuf, who was watching this exchange with a heavy brow. Nicolo wasn’t sure why—where was his Yusuf of light and laughter, easy to make friends and join in the conversation? Where was his optimist?</p><p>But there were so many more questions to ask, questions that had been weighing on him for years, that Nicolo turned away from those, and from Yusuf—though perhaps he should not have. For Yusuf clearly had already realized what it would take Nicolo the rest of the night.</p><p>“Like destiny,” Nicolo said to Quynh. “Drawing us together.”</p><p>Quynh grinned at him, while Andromache just shrugged.</p><p>“How long?” Nicolo asked the two of them. He gestured back at Yusuf. “We: it has only been fifteen years for us. How long for you?” He looked at Quynh when he asked it again, sensing somehow that she would tell him, while the Scythian…</p><p>“I was born in year thirteen of the Shang Dynasty,” Quynh told him. Nicolo frowned. He didn’t know what that meant. But Quynh was laughing at him, apparently expecting as such. “It was two thousand, seven hundred years ago.”</p><p>“And one.”</p><p>Quynh frowned over at Andromache. She snapped something off at Andromache in her language. With an easy, knowing smile, Andromache replied in the same language. Quynh huffed.</p><p>“By your calendar, two thousand, seven hundred and one. By mine, two thousand, seven hundred.”</p><p>Nicolo didn’t care about the single year that Quynh may or may not be older. All his mind could hear was two thousand, seven hundred.</p><p>Two thousand, seven-</p><p>Two <em>thousand</em>.</p><p>She one thousand, six hundred years older than <em>Christ</em>.</p><p>Nicolo crossed himself, unable to help the instinct in the face of such… <em>vastness</em>. Quynh laughed at him, and even Andromache smiled unkindly. But how could Nicolo <em>not</em> think of his religion in such a moment, when faced with a woman who looked no older than thirty who had been walking the earth since the time of the pyramids. This woman might have seen the Tower of Babel arise and fall. What could she have possibly seen? What might she know??</p><p>“I am practically a child compared to Andromache, though,” Quynh pointed out. She tapped Andromache on the shoulder, not gently. “Tell them, Andromache. Make the little priest fall down and pray to his little god.”</p><p>Nicolo couldn’t take his eyes off the Scythian. She was older than Quynh. Older than nearly three thousand years. Old enough to make nearly three thousand years look like a <em>child</em>. How long had she been walking the earth? Since the time of the Great Flood? Since the first peoples? Did she watch Caine strike down Abel? Was she there when Adam and Eve stepped out of the garden?</p><p>A thought chilled Nicolo’s spine. Had she been there, in the garden with them? Was she Lilith, or the serpent itself, made flesh and damned to walk the earth for all of eternity?</p><p>But Andromache smiled like she could read all of Nicolo’s worst fears on his face.</p><p>“I am old. But not so old that others were not around before me. I grew up in a tribe with other people. We hunted, we waged war. We loved, we died. Eventually, one day I died. And then: I came back.” She spread her large hands in front of her. “There were no dreams, then. Quynh was the first. I dreamt of her one day: born of battle and blood. And then, eventually, I found her.”</p><p>“Are there many others?” Yusuf asked, his first question of the night.</p><p>“No,” Andromache said. But it was in the way she said it.</p><p>“Was there?” Nicolo asked gently.</p><p>“Lykon.” Quynh’s voice cracked. Her eyes were wet fire. “He died in battle.”</p><p>Nicolo’s head whipped back to exchange a look with Yusuf.</p><p>“We can die?” Nicolo asked for both of them.</p><p>“One day,” Andromache nodded. “We do not know when. Or why. Lykon was younger than both of us.”</p><p>“A millennium. That was all,” Quynh told them.</p><p>Nicolo’s heart pounded in his chest. So there was something behind it. Something that called them into being and then called them back into the earth. There was a mystery to it, an ineffable quality. Calling a Scythian woman, then an Oriental, then calling a man to join them only to lay him back in the earth before either. And now, a Christian and a Moslem, fallen in battle on each other’s swords, called as one to the service of… what?</p><p>He wanted to ask. <em>Why</em>. <em>What</em>. But how to ask a question of such magnitude? A question which was so massive it could never be caged in and captured by mere words, but also so incomprehensible that only single words would come to mind. It was a paradox of the infinite: infinite divisibility leading to infinite mass, by becoming infinitely small it proved you must be infinitely big. Nicolo’s mind hurt trying to see the picture, to hold it all in his skull at once.</p><p>There seemed only one thing he could possibly ask now: one thing that was small enough that he could form the words, while still capturing some small facet of the bigger question that lurked just beyond the infinite:</p><p>“What would you have us do?”</p><p>Quynh laughed. “<em>Do</em>?”</p><p>Andromache’s eyes ached. They bored a hole in Nicolo’s skull.</p><p>“There are no masters here,” she told him.</p><p><em>Of course there are</em>, Nicolo thought.</p><p>“Of course there are,” Yusuf said aloud.</p><p>Nicolo loved him with nerves ablaze.</p><p>Quynh scoffed. “If you are seeking orders to follow, go back to your churches and your mosques,” she told them.</p><p>Yusuf bristled. “We are not-”</p><p>“-what do <em>you</em> do?” Nicolo asked instead. He gestured between the women. “What is your journey?”</p><p>“We get into fights,” Quynh mocked.</p><p>But Andromache shushed her, shaking her head. She appeared to take sympathy on Nicolo, which: a bad sign. What was there to take pity on, unless…</p><p>Andromache leaned forward, lacing long fingers together between her knees. She considered her words carefully before she spoke in that perfect, un-accented Arabic:</p><p>“We go where we want. We do what we please. But, as we go, we try and do some good. Save lives where we can. Protect those who need it. You could join us. Help out. Or you could go on your ways. There is nothing I or Quynh would, or could, do to stop you.” She smiled softly. “I would hope you would stay with us. For a little while, at least. I would hope you would help those you find in need. But there are no masters here.”</p><p>Nicolo’s heart: he could hear it in his ears. Could Andromache see it? Quynh, with her sharp, marksman’s eyes?</p><p>“You hope?”</p><p>Andromache shrugged. “It is your life. Your gift.”</p><p>Nicolo swallowed past the lump in his throat.</p><p>“But it is destiny.” His voice came out as a plea.</p><p>Andromache sighed. Quynh looked like she wanted to laugh, but controlled herself, barely.</p><p>“Yusuf and I, we died by each other’s swords. How could… if not…” Nicolo turned to Yusuf, eyes pleading. Yusuf was staring back at him, hand held over his mouth in a loose fist, thumb disappearing into his beard under his chin. Yusuf’s eyes were heavy, lines of compassion streaking his brow and cheeks. Nicolo’s mouth went dry.</p><p>Even Yusuf knew.</p><p>“Excuse me.”</p><p>The night air was dense with bugs as Nicolo pushed his way through the jungle, feet taking him who knows where. There were other creatures in the dark: ones with larger bites than the mosquitos and gnats that peppered his neck. But he paid them no mind, and apparently that was enough to grant him safe passage for tonight, because for hours he walked without being bothered.</p><p>He emerged in a clearing before dawn, dark shape in front of him blotting out the stars. It was the temple to that Indian idol, the god of death. Nicolo stood, panting, sweat cooling on his body as he craned his neck up to stare at the dark blot on the sky.</p><p>Without thought his feet took him forward again, to the base of the great temple. And then he began to climb. The pyramid had stairs carved into its outside, making his ascent in the black of night possible. Once, twice the ancient stone beneath his feet crumbled away, but enough held that he was able to keep going. He didn’t die once. What a wonder.</p><p>Nicolo reached the top of the ancient temple just as the sky was beginning to lighten with pre-dawn sunlight. The jungle splayed out beneath him in every direction, trees growing clearer and clearer with every passing minute. Around him, the exotic birds of this foreign land began to awaken, filling the dark with their cries. The bugs fell away as the sky grew lighter, burnt off with the promise of day. Nicolo sat down, staring into the East.</p><p><em>Why?!</em> he wanted to scream at the dawn.</p><p>
  <em>How?!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Who has done this?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>For what purpose?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>What do you want us to do with it?</em>
</p><p><em>What am </em>I <em>meant to do with it?</em></p><p>He said nothing. As dawn broke over the jungle, Nicolo bent forward over his knees and began to cry.</p><p>The sun was fully ablaze when Nicolo descended the stairs of Rajarajesvaram.</p><p>Yusuf was waiting at the bottom.</p><p>“There has to be answers,” Nicolo told him as he walked off the last steps. Yusuf said nothing, waiting for him.</p><p>“Andromache and Quynh may not know them. But they are out there.”</p><p>Nicolo drew level with Yusuf. His lover stood there stolidly, unspeaking, but his eyes: his eyes were fixed on Nicolo’s.</p><p>“I will find these answers,” Nicolo told him, chin tilted up, eyes gleaming with all the tears he had left to shed. “There is a reason we, amongst all men, do not succumb to death. We have a purpose, and there is a plan. All that is left for us is to uncover it.”</p><p>Now Yusuf broke his silence, though his posture remained stiff, only his mouth moving.</p><p>“Nicolo di Genoa: I would follow you through the seven gates of <em>Jahannam</em> and back, beyond the greatest seas and beneath the deepest caverns. I would build a tower to the moon and trek over its quintessent mountains, build a ship with sails made for navigating the celestial ether and pluck the stars from their firmament, all if you commanded it.”</p><p>“Yusuf,” Nicolo sighed. He cupped his hand to Yusuf’s cheek, heart breaking with the love he saw written across every line of his face. Yusuf covered Nicolo’s hand with his own. “I would never command you.”</p><p>“My love for you commands me,” Yusuf proclaimed. Nicolo sighed again.</p><p>“Do you not want answers? Do you not need to know why?”</p><p>“I know why.”</p><p>“Why, then?”</p><p>“<em>Allahu akbar</em>.”</p><p>“<em>Yusuf</em>-”</p><p>Yusuf shrugged. “It is why. It is how. I have my answers.” Stepping forward, Yusuf brought both arms down to wrap around Nicolo’s waist. “But you, my Nicolo: if you do not have yours, then I go wherever your search takes you.”</p><p>Nicolo leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together. They breathed each other’s air, sharing each other’s space in a way that made them so nearly one. One half each of a whole person, split in two by… But not anymore. Now they were united. Nicolo closed his eyes and breathed.</p><p>Tears spilled from Nicolo’s lashes. He felt Yusuf’s breath cooling his cheeks where tears had left wet tracks down his face.</p><p>“I do not know how long this will take,” Nicolo warned him.</p><p>“Good thing we have so long,” Yusuf countered.</p><p>“I do not know how far this will lead me.”</p><p>“So many miles to spend by your side.”</p><p>Nicolo took a steadying breath. He opened his eyes, even as fresh tears spilled from them.</p><p>“I do not know where to begin.”</p><p>Yusuf smiled at this. Gently, he brought his thumbs up to wipe the tears from Nicolo’s cheeks.</p><p>“Ah, my love: this, perhaps I can help. When going on such a journey, why not begin on solid ground?”</p>
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